Taking ERC funds for COVID relief: Abuse of privilege
DEAR EDITOR,
I am writing this letter revealing my disparity, disagreement, disappointment and dissatisfaction with our country’s ERC, with much reluctance. We are all human beings often slipping and slipping away from our own lofty ideals and we must allow ourselves, our leaders and our leading organizations some space for reconsideration, recovery, repentance and return.
My difference, disagreement, disappointment and dissatisfaction with our ERC goes back to the days following our 2020 elections March 02. I was expecting the Chair and ERC to come out clearly, adding its weight to condemned and rejected RO Region Four, actions of Clairmont Mingo. Some might argue that those Elections issue is outside the ERC mandate. I will reject that. Little else, if anything, could have been more German to the “raison” for our ERC. In fact, I think, in our circumstances, that’s the essence of our ERC. Others argue that while what RO Mingo was doing was wrong, the ERC had to if it was also talking about the broader root of what Mr. Mingo and Mr. Lowenfield and others do. To rebuke Mingo and Lowenfield would have been one sided. I would have preferred that the ERC had proceeded to do both, first, condemn their actions and then proceed to discuss the views and the imagination, which would have motivated them to do as they did. The door to a national process of truth and reconciliation would have been opened, a necessary and essential process, which could not normally be entertained or initiated during the criminal proceedings before the court. The most likely outcome now would be an increase in our alienation and the hardening of our various jobs.
I refrained from publicly commenting on our ERC during those five long months of suffering and bleeding our nation that I thought the ERC should have stepped in. I have also abstained so far in the dissatisfaction expressed publicly by ERC Commissioner Roshan Khan. is the G $ 150,000.00 Christmas Bonus. I will disclose that I have been sympathetic to his complaints, but I hesitated again to make public comments, giving way to some other members of our civic community, as I excused myself.
However, I must deny that latest “explanation” from the Chair of ERC, my esteemed junior fellow pupil so many years ago, the Rev. John O. Smith, that the G $ 150,000.00 was a COVID relief that Commissioners had ‘to give it to themselves. It was at least a great abuse of privilege and if they were ordinary citizens, with no great respect, they would have been considered guilty of converting ERC allocations for their own benefit.
There is much more that could be said but furthermore, I am not saying that.
Yours faithfully,
Samuel AA Hinds
Former President and Former Prime Minister